THE WEEKLY NEWSPAPER OF LOWER MANHATTAN

THE WEEKLY NEWSPAPER OF LOWER MANHATTAN | Volume 16 • Issue 47 | April 16-22, 2004

Inside

Editorial
Disturbing developments on 9/11 and in Iraq
If anyone needed more proof that the worsening situation in Iraq and the 9/11 Commission’s probing of administration officials are taking a devastating toll on the credibility of George Bush’s presidency, there was Bush’s appearance on TV on Tuesday evening.

Penny Post
My Easter dinner
By Andrei Codrescu
Laura’s mom cooked an Easter dinner that Laura and her sister Susan like a lot: fried chicken, potato salad, black-eyed peas with bacon and chili sauce, and strawberry shortcake for desert. Goodbye, Dr. Atkins, hello country goodness. And when all were seated mom said the Easter blessing: “Dear God,” she said over the steaming dishes, “Please let us hear no more of that ‘Passion’ movie.”

Talking Point
Signs of a suburban Lower East Side?
By Dara Lehon
Jaywalking across Broadway and Houston Sts. on a spring day, I am blinded into a standstill by a blinking red hand. A BMW Minicooper (then a taxi) whizzes by, followed by shopping-bag-laden, meandering pedestrians gabbing on cell phones and sipping overpriced coffee. Half-expecting a backdrop of mountains and smog, a very-large, very-legible, very-kelly-green BROADWAY sign looms above. I’m with a Long Island-native, who’s un-phased (by things other than our crazy jaywalking).

Safety tip: Don’t change Houston St. medians
By Shirley Secunda and Brad Hoylman
This past January, a distraught public packed Community Board 2’s Traffic and Transportation Committee meeting to protest the highway-like nature of a Houston St. reconstruction plan from the Departments of Transportation and Design and Construction. C.B. 2 passed a resolution opposing features of the plan that would raise the pedestrian danger quotient on an already hard-to-cross street, like left-turn bays and removal of median tips (pedestrian safety islands) from crosswalks. The board also hailed D.O.T. and D.D.C.’s willingness to work with the community and revisit the drawing board to develop alternatives.

Letters to the editor

Doctor's View
Look who’s not talking
By Dr. Amy Glaser
Kids may be talking more than parents think they are, said Amy Joelson, a downtown physcotherpist. Because when they do speak, it is often in a profound way. Parents just need to know what to listen for.

Downtown Local

Report

Liberty at James Madison
Express wins 5 awards

A knockout event in Tribeca

Downtown rape reported

New York show

Patient art

Good old time for Good Old Lower East Side

Greene St. developments trouble some from Soho

Nadler talk

Youth/Children's

Tribeca teen gets a kick out of reffing
By Jill Stern
During the winter soccer season at Pier 40 I saw Ben Maer, age 15, and a freshman at Bronx High School of Science, every weekend, because he was the referee at my daughter’s games. All the moms on the sideline at the indoor field were impressed with Ben. I recently interviewed him via e-mail about his part-time job as a soccer referee with the Downtown Soccer League. He is one of only five teenagers the league hired.

Youth Activities

Downtown Express photo by Elisabeth Robert

Peking eggs
Janaya Carlo, 5, examined an egg aboard the South Street Seaport Museum’s Peking ship during the museum’s Easter egg scavenger hunt last Saturday. Click here for more pictures.

$PECIAL REPORT
How to spend Downtown’s last billion?
By Josh Rogers
Spend $100 million here and $100 million there and pretty soon you’ve spent the $1 billion left to help Lower Manhattan after 9/11.

The oyster is the pearl, group says
By Deborah Lynn Blumberg
In a warehouse on Pier 26, scientist Scott Wingerter plunges his hand into a large, circular tank filled with water from the Hudson River to retrieve a speckled oyster that contracts from his touch.

E.P.A. watchdog panel looks to expand testing
By Elizabeth O’Brien
Experts charged with reviewing the Environmental Protection Agency’s response to the World Trade Center collapse have recommended broader testing to determine what, if any, contamination remains from the disaster.

Hospital looks to build 50-story apartment tower
By Elizabeth O’Brien
Local residents packed a Community Board 1 committee meeting on Tuesday to hear a presentation on the future of the N.Y.U. Downtown Hospital parking lot site.

Vesey elevators coming this summer to a bridge near you
By Josh Rogers
By late June or early July, nearly three years after the Twin Towers were destroyed, officials hope to restore the first safe and reliable way near the World Trade Center site for wheelchair-bound people to enter Battery Park City.

Seaport mall operator still working on a new plan
By Lincoln Anderson
Young bar patrons flooded the sidewalk on St. Mark’s near Avenue A last summer.

Vonnegut’s war play restaged As war rages in Iraq, the author’s only theater script resonates deeply
By JERRY TALLMER
Harold Ryan, who has been off to war for seven years, killing everything in his gun sight just for the hell of it––103 kills by macho Harold’s own count––has come home at long last to his wife Penelope, who is not at all thrilled to see him. Nor are the two suitors who have been hanging around, tongues hanging out: Dr. Norbert Woodly, a peace-loving thoughtful type, and Herb Shuttle, a vacuum-cleaner salesman.

Koch on Film
By Ed Koch
“Son Frere” (+)
This is an exceedingly poignant story involving two brothers, probably
“Chicago - Mayoral Style” (+)
Mayor Michael Bloomberg did a superb job performing at last week’s “Inner Circle” show. The show is sponsored by City Hall reporters during which they lampoon the mayor and other members of government. I performed in that show twelve times during my mayoralty. My best performance was under the direction of Tommy Tune who asked that I wear a gold-lame suit with two pigeons perched on my top hat. The audience was in stitches. I said to the near 1,000 in attendance, “It’s all part of being mayor.”

Three Generations of Women Speak
By CHRISTOPHER BYRNE
James Sherman’s new play “From Door to Door” is a warmly lyrical family drama played out through the experiences and interactions of three generations of Jewish women. It’s also an exploration of how culture and religion shape an individual’s experiences, at times creating neuroses.